Sukkot on Shabbat: The Embrace That Cannot Be Separated

Sukkot on Shabbat: The Embrace That Cannot Be Separated

"His left hand is under my head, and His right hand embraces me." (Song of Songs 2:6)

שמאלו תחת לראשי וימינו תחבקני

Sukkot is a Jewish harvest festival that lasts seven days. It comes five days after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For the whole week, families eat, rest, and sometimes sleep in a sukkah. That's a small hut built outdoors, with a roof of branches loose enough to let you see the stars. It remembers the Israelites' forty years in the wilderness, when God sheltered them in fragile booths.

Each day of Sukkot we also hold the lulav: a palm branch bound with myrtle and willow, together with an etrog, a fragrant citron. We hold the four together and wave them in every direction. It shows that God is everywhere, and that every kind of person belongs in one bundle.

This year the first day of Sukkot falls on Shabbat, the weekly Sabbath of rest. On Shabbat the lulav and etrog are not held. We do not take anything into our hands. We only sit in the sukkah and let ourselves be held.

The Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, was an eighteenth-century teacher of Chassidut, the inner and mystical side of Torah. In his book Likkutei Torah he teaches that on the first day of Sukkot the right hand of this verse is revealed. It is chesed, God's kindness. It draws every soul so close that it becomes a real embrace, a chibuk, "like a person holding a friend so that they cannot be separated at all."

Life is the embrace. It is living in the moment, in the present, in the blessing of what we have. This body, this mind, this spirit are what I let happen. On Shabbat I don't reach for the embrace. I stop, and it is already here.

The Torah asks us to live in booths for seven days, so we remember that God made us live in booths when He brought us out of Egypt. The sukkah is made of what the earth gives. Through its branches we see the sky. It reminds me that I am connected to God through creation and nature. I have a responsibility to keep that close, to receive it as God's kindness, and to give it back by caring for what has been given to me. In this way we co-create a reality we can see as love, as kindness, as something that cannot be separated from us.

The Alter Rebbe quotes the prophet Isaiah: "A sukkah will be shade by day." Day is kindness. The shade over it is the makif, the surrounding light. It is too great to take inside, so it encircles us instead.

For me, what surrounds me is divine grace. It is in the movement of time and the processes of everyday living. It is in being strong enough to withstand the difficulties and awake to the beauty around me at all times. Mostly it is love, and the recognition that love is all there really is. There is the love of my daughter, my memories, my spiritual identity, my heavenly family, and what I have now. That is the beauty embracing me, through God, through me, and through the spirits of those long gone.

The Alter Rebbe says Yom Kippur plants something in us. In the days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot it grows, and on the first day of Sukkot it rises as the kindness of Abraham, the father of our people.

I know what was planted in me. On Yom Kippur I felt peace through fasting and endurance, through connection to God and faith, and through forgiveness and love of myself. These were the seeds. Now I am rooted in fine soil and nourished by the everlasting waters of divine grace. I will grow beautifully.

The Alter Rebbe asks how Abraham could hold such kindness. It was because Abraham said, "I am dust and ashes." Dust is soil, the ground a seed goes into before it rises.

My lowest place has been losing myself and neglecting the very fabric of love and beauty. From there came an awareness: I don't have to lose all of myself to anger and grief, to struggle and strife. From that ground I look toward the greater good of gratitude, of health, of knowing I am loved.

The Torah tells us who belongs at the festival table: "Rejoice in your festival, you, your son and your daughter, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow." Then it says, "You will be only joyful."

Only joyful. These are my memories of Ariana, of blessed memory, through all our time together. I carry them now and forever. It is all I have. It is strong enough to embrace me now, every day, for the rest of my life. It is the love that overcomes, that lifts me and makes me stronger.

I may be an orphan, and in some ways a widow, since I have also lost Ari's father, my best friend. The bond we shared remains. The Torah gives us a seat at the table anyway. I will always have that bond and the love that carries me through this lifetime of beautiful seasons: blessings of health for mind and body, and the simplicity to enjoy life, and to not nullify its meaning by ignoring what has been given.

The Torah commands simcha on this festival, and our prayers call it zman simchateinu, the season of our joy. On this Shabbat the joy is quiet. It is the joy of being held. It is my heartfelt wish to all those reading that you, too, will be embraced with a profound sense of stillness, of being held, of always knowing you are loved.

Hebrew terms

Sukkah (סוכה) is a booth with a roof of branches you can see the sky through. It is the only mitzvah, or commandment, you enter with your whole body.

Lulav (לולב) is the palm branch, held together with myrtle, willow, and the etrog. Together they are called the four kinds.

Chibuk (חיבוק) means an embrace. The Alter Rebbe uses it for a closeness that can never be separated.

Makif (מקיף) is the surrounding light, God's presence that is too great to take inside, so it encircles us like the sukkah's shade.

Chesed (חסד) is kindness, the right hand of the embrace. It is Abraham's quality, revealed on the first day of Sukkot.

Simcha (שמחה) is joy. The Torah commands it on this festival: "You will be only joyful."

A commentary on Sukkot and Shabbat, drawing on Leviticus 23, Deuteronomy 16, Isaiah 4:6, and the Alter Rebbe's Likkutei Torah, "Ushavtem mayim b'sasson."

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